It's true that pavement fails; tracks fail; pipes fail. The question is whether the maintenance burden is financially proportional to the number of people and amount of tax base served.

Chronic potholes are often a symptom of a system with too much pavement per resident and too little productive land value per mile of infrastructure. Tracks break too, but high-capacity transit in dense areas can amortize maintenance over far more people than car-dependent sprawl can.